In response to 1: Troop carriers are not missiles, they are small little ships. Bombers are capable of ramming into the back of a ship, and so too would a troop carrier. Even though ships are able to tear up missiles, missiles do hit. Other games have implemented boarding and have it work just fine so it's not like some kind of new and mysterious mechanic that's never been done before and no one knows if it will work. Finally just because something is difficult to pull off does not mean it is unviable or impossible to do. Shutting down a system for what could be the rest of the match is very powerful and should be difficult.
Think about what you're saying for a moment. You're talking about taking a ship, loading it with a bunch of squishy humans, plus their equipment, plus enough explosives need to bust through the armor, asking them to make a landing on a moving, shooting target at hundreds of kilometers of second. There is a wide gap between flying a rough intercept course so that you're withing weapons fire range and ***.....
landing. Moreover, if you could breach the armor enough to access the hull in the first place, why bother with a troop transport at all? If you can put that much explosive in contact with the surface of a ship's hull-- not even a proximity detonation-- why not just send a missile? How are those marines supposed to get out? Do they just stay there? If their assault transport burrowed in, then it's still inside the enemy ship, meaning it's still vulnerable to fire as it exits. Who would sign up for that operation? There's not even any guarantee that friendly weapons fire won't come in.
The bottom line is that if you wanted a battery dead, you'd shoot at it. If sending marines to destroy batteries were an effective solution at disabling ships, then what the hell is the point of weapons? The capabilities of human beings in space, compared to beams, slugs, and guided munitions are incomparable. A space navy is not a wet navy. Don't let mediocre, institutionalized sci fi tropes become reality to you.
In response to 2: I hate to be one of those people that goes "Oh implementing my idea can't possibly be that hard!" but in this instance I do not think it would be a unnecessary amount of work. The only sprite to be created would be the boarding ship and the rest of it would play out as a series of text messages and numbers, Perhaps a small little bar to let you know which way the battle is leaning. Also this doesn't demand the after battle boarding party be scrapped. Both can co-exist.
No, it wouldn't just be a series of text messages. It'd be an in-game UI as well, an entirely new series of ships, mechanics for which batteries offer what kind of resistance. It would also require entirely new AI routines determining how ships react to boarding parties, react while under boarding party action, and react after they've been taken.
In addition to this the dev is building a game, the game is in development, he already is going to be backdating stats and dynamics so this is essentially boiling down to "The dev shouldn't do it, b/c the dev will have to do it" which would make sense were I demanding this be implemented at a certain date, which I'm not. Also saying that "this shouldn't be implemented EVER b/c other stuff is being worked on" is strange as well. What would be the point of having any suggestions for anything if we can't discuss anything until the perfect version of the game already exists? It's like those arguments that say "we shouldn't give to child's play b/c people are dying in Africa" as in we should give to no charity if we can't give to the most needed charity.
This entire thing is asinine. You realize that fractalsoftworks is basically Alex right? There's one other guy that does the art, one guy that does the lore, but all the coding, as of his interview, is done by Alex. His time and attention are EXTREMELY finite. That he's as reactive as he is with rebalancing and adding new content is a blessing enough, but he has said-- HIMSELF-- that time spent on adding petty guns and extra features is time not spent on the campaign. And you want him to, what, stop making the game move forward so you can nurse Battlestar Galactica fantasies?
Also saying it's pointless and complicated assumes the premise of the discussion to already be true. At no point has anyone but you asserted that it would be either pointless or complex, and you've not given a good explanation for why you feel that way about either. I would in retort say that this system makes the game have more depth, and opens up a plethora of strategic options while giving a good risk to reward contrast. The stuff you describe about having more opportunities to board and having different types of maries implies that you would like to make boarding contextual instead of tactical, which is boring, it's like a quicktime event without the quick part. Also having different types of marines implies marine types would counter other marines. So would we then have a game where the Rock republic marines board the Scissor system marine's ship in order to win? This as well sounds terribly boring as well. If you think that those in contrast to what I have said would be the better option, well I would respectfully disagree.
'Strategic options' like forcing me to pause my menu and break up the combat even more. 'Strategic options' like selecting a target like I always do, and giving some kind of stupid order to board. I'm not going to lie, my personal, biggest problem with this suggestion is that I think it's utterly implausible, but that doesn't mean I don't have mechanical issues with this beyond the problems of coding boarding, which, of course, you haven't considered at all. Boarding one ship is one thing, but how are you supposed to track the hostile boarding action attempts across an entire fleet? And your own hostile boarding actions? I'm not just talking about how the game could give you that information, but how you, the player, are supposed to even keep it all in mind?
There is good complexity and bad complexity, and this is bad complexity. Some people like to play this game more individually, some more tactically. I'm somewhere in the middle, but that doesn't mean I'm ok with this many interruptions and distractions. The difference between my suggestions and your suggestions are that I'm not asking for much, and the changes aren't much either. You're asking for a LOT and your changes are paradigm shifting. And no, at no point did I suggest an RPS approach to marine types. I merely meant a distinction between marines for boarding action, marines for zero g station action, and marines for planetary action.
